The Crack Lighter Memo

...or What's Really Wrong With The System.

So here's an interesting fact you may not be aware of-the average 1.29 Bic lighter is not hot enough nor is the flame long enough to smoke crack with. You need a higher temperature and a bigger flame to get the rock hot enough to smoke, at least in any reasonable amount of time. Cooking crack is a crude process, but experts agree that your typical bic just won't do it right. Fortunately, there are lighters out there that will work-lighters with an adjustable flame that can burn hot (especially when you take off the easily sabotaged regulator switch) and don't last very long, but that reach almost exactly the temperature to smoke crack with. In other words, in the 90's, some asshole invented the Crack Lighter.

The rest of this article will be all conjecture, but it seems damn likely to me.

So one day Johnny Pencil Pusher at Pentex lighters, LTD, ponders one day "Hey, what about that Crack market?" Johnny has never smoked crack, of course-he's got the hookup for Xanax, Valium and about a dozen brand-name amphetamines, so he puts together a focus group of crackheads, so he can find their complaints with the lighters they have. He discovers two things which make him very happy-one, that regular cigarette lighters & even zippos are insufficient for freebasing crack, and two, that crackheads are irresponsible and lose their lighters all the time.

So Johnny writes up a memo and makes a chart on the habits of crackheads-how often they smoke and how often they need to go get new lighters. He takes his pie chart to the top of the corporate ladder and says "Hey, we should make a new line of lighters that gets hot enough to use for crack." His superiors agree and production starts of a new type of lighter. Johnny also knows (as anyone would) that crackheads have no money, so he suggests making the cheapest, shoddiest, 59 cent lighters that can be produced by sweatshop labor and imported en masse.

The lighter is a huge success, with some crackheads buying three or four a day but being unable to hold onto them. It rides Crack addiction and sends Pentex LTD's profits into the stratosphere as this massive problem takes root all over the country. It enjoys another major boost when meth is introduced and becomes just as much of a widespread problem. Johnny's stock options soar, particularly when he donates money to politicians intent on cutting DARE and other anti youth drug programs. (A side note: these programs are also utter bullshit, but Johnny doesn't know that-he went to private school.)

Johnny Pencil Pusher makes millions and he retires to Maui, where he later dies from mixing tequila with valium & underage thai prostitutes.